The BBC deserves to be protected and defended, especially against liars and opportunists

English original of article published this morning in Italian by La Stampa

Journalists at the world’s most famous public broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation, liken their BBC to Saint Sebastian, a victim forever tied to a tree and impaled with arrows. The high political profile of a publicly financed media company does mean that whenever it makes errors or can be accused of bias, the controversy becomes much louder and more painful than for other media. Yet now that the BBC is being threatened with a $1 billion lawsuit by Donald Trump, the feeling of martyrdom risks becoming more intense than ever, especially because right-wing British politicians, including Boris Johnson, have jumped on the Trump bandwagon.

This is important, for several reasons. Trump’s attack on the BBC matters because it is the latest example of his campaign to intimidate the media, with the difference that this time he has chosen an international target. It also matters because this attack forms part of his effort to rewrite the history of January 6^th 2021, presenting the riot at the US Congress that day as a legitimate demonstration against a 2020 election he claims was fraudulent rather than as violent attempts to overthrow the US constitution following a free and fair election. Trump is not yet Stalin, but his determination to rewrite history shows he has the same mentality as the Soviet dictator.

The attack on the BBC and the errors that caused it also matters because it endangers the future of one of the world’s great bastions of public broadcasting. We can all criticise public broadcasters such as the BBC, RAI, Deutsche Welle or France Télévisions, perhaps thinking they are wasting our money, making programmes we don’t like or showing political bias. But in a world in which media is fragmenting, disinformation is ubiquitous and public faith in democracy is declining, public broadcasters offer one of the last remaining anchors for the dissemination of reliable information and for independent debates about ideas.

One notable feature of this transatlantic row about the BBC is that the main programme that is being challenged was broadcast not last week, not last month but more than one year ago. It was a half-hour documentary looking back at the shocking events in Washington more than three years earlier. In 2022 a committee of the House of Representatives, containing members from both the Democratic and Republican parties, had studied those events and had voted unanimously to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for prosecution on several charges, including for attempting to incite an insurrection. So it is not surprising that the BBC documentary reflected that point of view, though it also included some voices that defended Trump.

Nonetheless, in the hands of a sworn political enemy a small error can be made to look like a cardinal sin. The error was that when presenting Trump’s speeches on January 6^th the BBC film edited together some quotes that were actually said separately on that day, without indicating that time had lapsed between them and that the context within which each phrase was delivered had been different. This was careless: it would have been easy to show that there was a gap, without making any real difference to the information being conveyed. Now it has provided an opening to allow the BBC’s critics, including the shamelessly opportunistic Johnson, to fire their arrows.

Admittedly, this was not the only point of criticism of the BBC: a dossier compiled by an independent adviser to the organisation on editorial standards had also found cause for complaint about the BBC’s coverage of the war in Gaza and in its failure to intervene quickly to stop broadcasting anti-semitic remarks being made by a rock-singer at the Glastonbury pop festival in the summer. Every public organisation, especially one with as much influence as the BBC, needs to be held accountable. But even such quality control needs to be realistic: the BBC broadcasts thousands of hours of television and radio, and publishes thousands of words on its website, every week, so there are bound to be some errors or points of carelessness. And let it be noted: even the adviser’s dossier misquoted Trump’s speech while criticising the BBC’s misquotes.

What is important with all media, public or private, is, first, that when mistakes are made they are corrected quickly and prominently, with apologies when appropriate; and, second, that their reporting is sufficiently balanced, overall, to convince the audience that it is reliable and being provided in good faith. The key mistake made by the executives and board of the BBC is that they took too long to correct the minor mistake made in the documentary about Trump: the board apparently received the adviser’s dossier in May and failed to say anything publicly about it until this month.

By any standards, that is bad management, which is why it is appropriate that the BBC’s top executive, its director general, Tim Davie, has now resigned. It also, however, reflects the politicisation of its governing board, a problem with which RAI is all too familiar, and the way politically motivated members appear to have paralysed the organisation’s response.

The question now is what impact this will have diplomatically and politically. The BBC has apologised to Trump for the careless editing but has robustly rejected Trump’s claim for compensation. The apology is understandable, given the board’s delay in dealing with the issue, and it is to be hoped that the BBC will stick strongly to its position concerning the lawsuit. No ordinary viewer could conclude that the documentary was defamatory towards Trump, and the fact that he won the election a month later showed that it did him no damage. His attempt to rewrite history must be resisted.

The domestic politics of the BBC are trickier. Right-wing media and political parties are ganging up on the BBC, hoping to deprive it of funding in 2027 when its financing is due to be reviewed, because they wish to emulate Trump by skewing the media and the flow of information in their favour. One bad sign is that Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, who has shown a regrettable willingness to flatter and suck up to Trump, has stayed silent about the issue, probably also because his government is politically unpopular.

This is dangerous. The BBC is popular among the British public and carries an enormous reputation around the world for its journalism. Along with other bastions of high-quality journalism internationally, it needs to be defended and preserved, not undermined.